Shell Looks for Startup, Tech Partnerships Now More than Ever

Royal Dutch Shell is making a significant push into venture capital investing and collaboration with early-stage startups in the energy space, said Marvin E. Odum, president of Shell Oil Co.

Andy Rain/European Pressphoto Agency

“There’s never been more universities, individuals, small groups around the world, in China, all over the U.S., all over Europe, that we are directly investing in,” said Odum, speaking on stage at The Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Friday.

The oil and gas company looks at the new technology as a way to understand what the energy landscape will look like long into the future, according to Odum. He said the company lays out scenarios for 25 years, 50 years and 100 years down the line, and tries to project where the company can capitalize.

In that context, he said, it’s much more important for the company to invest and understand clean and renewable technologies at the earlier stages, rather than the ones that are in operation today.

The company has a wind project development business, but that’s not a focus right now, said Odum, because the incentives aren’t there.

At the same time, the company is putting a lot of investment in the shorter-term into creating new uses for the natural gas it extracts. “We’re putting large investments into taking natural gas and turning it into transportation fuel,” Odum said. “That’s a new emerging business that we’re investing heavily in.”

Shell is also producing biofuel out of sugarcane in Brazil.

Those ventures are shorter term, however, than the venture capital activities, according to Mr. Odum.

Shell has a strong focus on internal research and development, as well. “We have been spending more than any other international oil and gas company to research and develop innovative technology–more than $1 billion annually since 2007,” the company said in its 2012 annual report.

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